ANTIGLOBALISATION

Figure n°1: Global civil society positions on globalisation from “Introducing Global civil society” by Helmut anheir, Marlies Glasius and Mary Kaldor

Figure n°2: Extract from the official website of «Oxfam»

About us


We believe we can end poverty and injustice, as part of a global movement for change.
Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 like-minded organizations working together and with partners and allies around the world to bring about lasting change.

What we do

We work with others to end poverty and injustice, from campaigning to responding to emergencies.
We work in over 100 countries to overcome poverty and injustice. Working with more than 3,000 local partner organizations, we work with people living in poverty striving to exercise their human rights, assert their dignity as full citizens and take control of their lives.
We focus our efforts in these areas:
Development
We work with and through partners and communities on long-term programs to eradicate poverty and combat injustice.
Emergencies
We deliver immediate life-saving assistance to people affected by natural disasters or conflict, and help to build their resilience to future disasters.
Campaigning
We are part of a global movement for change. We raise public awareness of the causes of poverty and encourage ordinary people to take action for a fairer world.
Advocacy
We press decision-makers to change policies and practices that reinforce poverty and injustice.
Policy research
We can speak with authority as a result of thorough research and analysis, and the real experience of our partners in developing countries.

Why we do it

We believe that respect for human rights will help lift people out of poverty and injustice, allow them to assert their dignity and guarantee sustainable development. When we speak about having a rights-based approach, this is what we mean.
We believe that everyone should have the right to:
A livelihood
Oxfam works at many levels with partners and communities in support of their right to a decent living.
We argue for better working conditions and better protection of the natural resources on which poor communities depend. We campaign for fairer trade rules at the global level, and for better policies at the national level. We work with partners and communities to implement programs that lead to self-sustaining livelihoods, with a strong focus on women.
Basic services
Being healthy and educated is an essential step along the route out of poverty.
Yet millions of people have no access to health services, schooling or safe water. They are constantly at risk from illnesses that are easily prevented or treated, or are unable to read and write, which means exclusion from their society. We campaign for more and better aid, with a focus on basic services. At the program level, Oxfam provides health training and clean water supplies, as well as funding schools and teacher training.
Be safe from harm
War and natural disasters cause untold suffering for millions of people around the world and keep them locked in poverty. In disasters, people are at greater risk of violence, disease and abuse. We save lives in emergencies by providing shelter, clean water and sanitation. And by working with local partners, we help communities to rebuild and to better prepare themselves for future disasters.
Be heard
People living in poverty often have little influence over decisions that affect their lives.Oxfam supports partners and communities to understand their rights and to speak out about their needs and concerns. And, with others, we get people in power to listen and act.
Be treated as equal
People who are marginalized – because they are women, disabled or members of a religious or ethnic minority – are more likely to be poor.
We combat such discrimination, and work with these groups to ensure they have the means to enjoy equal access to jobs, essential services and influence

Figure n°3: World social forumKarachi (Pakistan) – March 2006

Figure n°4: “World social forum charter of Principles”

The committee of Brazilian organizations that conceived of, and organized, the first World Social Forum, held in Porto Alegre from January 25th to 30th, 2001, after evaluating the results of that Forum and the expectations it raised, consider it necessary and legitimate to draw up a Charter of Principles to guide the continued pursuit of that initiative. While the principles contained in this Charter - to be respected by all those who wish to take part in the process and to organize new editions of the World Social Forum - are a consolidation of the decisions that presided over the holding of the Porto Alegre Forum and ensured its success, they extend the reach of those decisions and define orientations that flow from their logic.

1. The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth.

4. The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations interests, with the complicity of national governments. They are designed to ensure that globalization in solidarity will prevail as a new stage in world history. This will respect universal human rights, and those of all citizens - men and women - of all nations and the environment and will rest on democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.

8. The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party context that, in a decentralized fashion, interrelates organizations and movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to the international to build another world.

10. It upholds respect for Human Rights, the practices of real democracy, participatory democracy, peaceful relations, in equality and solidarity, among people, ethnicities, genders and peoples, and condemns all forms of domination and all subjection of one person by another.

Figure n°5: “The threat to globalization” by Denis MacShane, from Newsweek, November 1, 1999

There is a new political specter haunting the world. The politics of antiglobalization are growing into a powerful force aimed at liberal democracy and market economies in a way not seen since communism's heyday earlier this century. Like all major new ideologies, antiglobalization conveys a surface message of a better, purer, more honest life. Yet it also masks darker and more dangerous forces. Supporters of democratic, open economies should not worry too much about the green eco-warriors. Rather, they should be concerned about the backlash against globalization that is being integrated into national politics and taking new and dangerous forms. The most obvious expression of this phenomenon is the rise of the nation, of religion and of ethnicity as causes that have to be protected against outside influence.

The world is seeing a rash of nation-first-or region-first-politics. It can be seen in the success of politicians like Jorg .Haider in Austria, in the Northern League of Italy, the neo-communist PDS party in easternGermany, and in the turn to isolationist anti-European politics by Britain's Conservative Party. All of these are expressions of the fear of the other, the outsider and the foreign which lies at the heart of antiglobalization. The BJP rides the same tiger in lndia; so do fundamentalists who adopt a politics that elevates religion over all. The same fear of the unknown is at work among those who dislike new sciences like biogenetics, as it is in the U.S. Senate's refusal to ratify a global nuclear test ban. It can even be seen in those-like the Mayor of New York-who treat foreign art with contempt, or among those French politicians determined to block the free flow of mass entertainment originating outside France's borders. Those who stand for open economies and liberal democracies need to face the new threat. After a decade of denying the linkage, there is now belated acknowledgment that global trade does need to take into consideration environmental and social issues.

MACSHANE is a Labour Party member of the British Parliament.

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